The Way of the Blue Screen of Death

Sister Engawa rushed into the Basho Leisure Complex and Sports Bar this morning screaming: "There's been a murder. There's been a murder."

"Honoured Sister," I replied. "We are hired killers living in an ancient fortress filled with assassins, it would be worrying if there were not any murders."

"Shut it, bamboo face," she replied, not strictly in accordance with the teachings of the Ninjitsu on The Way of the Respect for Minorities. "One of us has been murdered."

She was right. Master Shoku-chuudoku, the head of IT for the Order, was dead. Apparently, one of our number - who, no-one is quite sure - had lost some vital documentation when his supposedly hi-tech Ninja laptop crashed. Master Shoku-chuudoku had told him that, in order to make the thing function, the perp had to "turn it off and turn it on again". Apparently, the data was still lost and the IT guru informed his attacker he should not have turned off his machine without saving the data. "But I could not save the data. The laptopn had crashed," replied the attacker. Master Shoku-chuudoku then retorted, perhaps unwisely: "Read the ******* manual, already."

We know all this because the account was written in Master Shoku-chuudoku's still warm blood around the walls of the main courtyard of our fortress.

Master Shoku-chuudoku was beaten to a pulp with a keyboard and then had a series of electronic components inserted into every imaginable part of his body. He was then connected to the mains and "rebooted".

Master O'konomi, our head pathologist, estimated that he was attacked where he was found in the main courtyard, it would have taken him seven hours to die and that his screams would have been audible for a distance of fourteen miles.

Nobody heard a thing. I certainly didn't, even when I had to step over Master Shoku-chuudoku on my way to the Executive Restroom.